14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Paper
Understanding an European Partnership of Decentralized Schools: the Participants´ Perspective
Samantha Mulloni Martínez, Ángeles Parrilla Latas, Irene Crestar Fariña, María Esther Martínez Figueira
University of Vigo, Spain
Presenting Author: Mulloni Martínez, Samantha
The purpose of this communication is to present the evaluation, from the participants' perspective, of a European project (Green SEEDS - Synergy and Environment to Empower Decentralised Schools KA2-2019-1-IT02-KA201-062254), aimed at promoting a more participatory, inclusive and sustainable education between geographically distant schools located in the mountains and on small islands, but sharing similar socio-environmental realities.
In this way, links are created with their natural habitat, allowing the development of collective identification and laying the foundations for the protection of local culture and environment, which are part of European culture and environmental heritage (Schafft, 2016).
The survival of decentralised rural schools is currently at risk due to logistical obstacles and organisational, educational and pedagogical weaknesses they suffer from. This, in turn, is both a cause and effect of depopulation, especially in economically depressed areas. The connection and collaborative work between them offers a solution to this problem. A solution that combats the idea that geographical isolation does not necessarily mean cultural isolation (Miller, Scanlan, & Philippo, 2017).
The project Green SEEDS assumes that through the use of ICT, shared learning methodologies and extended learning environments, isolation can be broken, the risk of cultural deprivation countered, and the relationship and engagement of schools with the local environment and communities strengthened, promoting joint, inclusive and collaborative work between schools, communities and countries.
The choice of the environment as the main theme of the project is given not only by a search for increasing civic awareness among students, but also by the promotion of actions to respect diversity and the environment, using new practices and new methodologies (Echeíta and Navarro-Mateu, 2014) and care for the environment.
It is therefore important to support the idea of education for all, underpinned by the construction of values in students, among which the value of sustainability stands out, closely related to the construction of inclusive education and a global curriculum based on citizens' rights and sustainability (Booth and Ainscow, 2011).
Caring for the environment and our planet for future generations are issues of growing concern to society, and examples of this are their inclusion in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, framed in the 2030 Agenda (UN, 2015).
The project involved the participation of 20 classrooms from 8 nursery, primary and secondary schools, university institutions and research groups from 5 countries (Spain, Italy, Croatia, Greece and Cyprus) and was developed in two main phases: a first phase of teacher training (based on a Toolkit) and a second phase, called SeedQuest, of cooperative and participatory work between teachers and students in different countries.
The Toolkit is a curricular proposal made up of 5 modules, specially designed for the project, based on an active and participative learning model. It was created with the aim of, on the one hand, increasing the participants' knowledge of the different cultural, organisational, methodological and practical perspectives of education in isolated and rural schools and, on the other hand, increasing the participants' capacity to engage in dialogue (through ICT) with other teachers, students and schools across Europe.
The SeedQuests are small didactic units on the environment carried out by the pupils of the participating classes, following the Webquest methodology. The 20 participating classes from the partner countries have been paired to form 7 working groups, taking into account the different school levels. Each class has developed and worked on its own SeedQuest, dialoguing and collaborating with the twinned classes.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn this paper we focus on the evaluation process of the project.
Green SEEDS has opted for participatory evaluation, a type of evaluation that incorporates the perspective of the users of the programmes, projects or policies to be evaluated (Cousins, 2019). As such, participatory evaluation does not require a representative sample of participants, but can be developed from a purposive sample of participants, conducted with the intention of ensuring a diversity of views on the subject of the study.
This type of evaluation also aligns with EU guidelines promoting the construction of science with and for society. This is the deliberative and democratic construction of knowledge based on the incorporation of society in science and innovation activities, so that science integrates the interests, values and needs of citizens, thereby increasing the quality, relevance, social acceptability and sustainability of research and innovation (European Commission, 2020). In this case, Green SEEDS participants were invited to share their assessments, perceptions and experiences of the project.
With this in mind, the participatory evaluation of Green SEEDS aimed, on the one hand, to reflect on participants' perceptions of the project and the meaning of these perceptions and, on the other hand, to understand the barriers and obstacles they faced during their participation.
Participants have been selected intentionally, based on their ability to represent the relevance of the phenomenon under study derived from their experience in the project and their concern to deepen their analysis (Flick, 2018).
Different strategies and techniques (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2000), both individual and group, have been used to achieve the triangulation of data sources and to contrast all the information collected. The evaluation design contemplates and combines a double type of participants: teachers and students.
The evaluation was carried out at three specific moments: 1) at the end of the initial training (Toolkit), on an individual basis, to find out the teachers' impressions of the training; 2) during the development and implementation of the Seedquest, participating both teachers and students, using strategies such as unfinished sentences, SWOT analysis, timeline, dialogue circles and Digital Storytelling; 3) and finally, once this phase was completed, a World Café strategy was carried out with the teaching staff.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results can help to understand various issues concerning small and isolated schools from the perspective of the participants, but can also be a means to establish educational improvements and policy orientations that could help to decrease isolation and promote new views and connections between schools and between schools and their communities.
Cross-checking the results with the objectives of Green SEEDS, it is possible to state that the project has been able to break the isolation of the participating schools, contributing significantly to their empowerment and encouraging students to work and learn in a participatory, cooperative and inclusive way. The creation of a new network of schools created at the end of the project is a clear example of this.
The project has also managed, through a global and eco-social educational approach, to increase awareness and training on the environment in the new generations, acquiring new habits and tools to become agents of change towards fairer, more democratic and sustainable societies.
It has connected decentralised schools with urban schools through twinning. These connections have empowered teachers, increasing their skills and competences as teachers and as environmental agents for change. Looking to the future, it is necessary to address teacher professional development from a multidimensional, territorial and sustainable approach that considers the role of openness to other contexts and professionals as a means to advance and connect the learning needs of teachers and their concrete reality with those of the society to which any equation is due.
Finally, to highlight the need for more experiences like this and further research on how these initiatives can be scaled up to contribute to improving the development of participatory and inclusive schools and their role as an educational and environmental resource.
ReferencesBooth, T. and Ainscow, M. (2011). Index for Inclusion: developing learning and participation in schools; (3rd edition). Bristol: Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education (CSIE).
Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2000) Research Methods in Education. 5th Edition, Routledge Falmer, London. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203224342
Cousins, B. J. (2019). Collaborative Approaches to Evaluation: Principles in Use (Evaluation in Practice Series Book 3) (English Edition) (1.a ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.
Echeita Sarrionandia, G., & Navarro Mateu, D. (2014). Educación inclusiva y desarrollo sostenible. Una llamada a pensarlas juntas. Edetania. Estudios Y Propuestas Socioeducativos., (46), 141–161. Recuperado a partir de https://revistas.ucv.es/edetania/index.php/Edetania/article/view/165
EU: European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Scientific and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. A new ERA for research and innovation. 30 September 2020. COM (2020) 628 Final, available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ES/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52020DC0628&from=EN
Flick, U. (2018). An Introduction to Qualitative Research (6th ed.). Sage Publications Ltd
UN: "Resolution A/RES/70/1 Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development", 25 November 2015. [electronic edition] http://www.un.org/es/comun/docs/?symbol=A/RES/70/1.
14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Paper
Schooling as a Community Function in Rural Areas: A Comparative Cross-National Qualitative Synthesis
Dennis Beach1, Begoña Vigo Arrazola2, Montserrat Fargas Malet3, Carl Bagley3
1University of Borås; 2University of Zaragoza; 3Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Vigo Arrazola, Begoña;
Fargas Malet, Montserrat
Rural communities (settlements) are often expressed geo-graphically, in terms of a metrics of distances and density only, as tangibly belonging to and characterising a geographic place that is peripheral to or existing beyond urban spaces. However, though this may be valid for fixing rural areas in geographic space, it is insufficient for capturing the variations and differences of what rural/rurality means culturally (and across time and space variations) to and for people’s lives: i.e. relatively and relationally (Beach and Öhrn, 2022; Rönnlund, 2019).
In this paper, we adopt this (cultural) relativistic perspective within a cross-national comparative transdisciplinary analysis that seeks answers to the question of what constitutes rurality and the characteristics of rural places, the schools in them, people that work and study there: and their relationships. We draw on different academic disciplines to do so, and the concept of rural hermeneutical space, where rural areas, places and objects in them (including schools and the objects, interactions and people there) have meaning in relation to similar objects and representations not just “in situ” but also in other places. A key concept is hermeneutical rurality and the meanings that are attributable/ attributed to the internal school, the people in it and their actions, the community they are part of, and the larger social and production ecology (culturally, materially and historically) surrounding these communities. We use it to try to answer a simple question. Namely: What does the community function of schools in rural areas look like based on a cross-national synthesis of qualitative research; and in whose/which interests does it operate?
We have explored this question relating to different rural places in three European countries (Northern Ireland, Spain and Sweden) using a cross-national synthesis of research products (published and in press) relating to how schools in rural places seem to work to help local populations and develop rural consciousness (Keddie, Mills and Mills, 2008). The paper drives the twin idea that (a) education and schooling are often conflated terms, but they are different processes- and particularly in terms of their community function; and (b) whether rural schools in rural places offer schooling rather than education is complex and contested. These main findings comprise key points that are presented in a narrative form in the paper, using a number of thematic headings followed by a discussion and conclusion section.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe data for the cross-national research synthesis comes from ethnographic research in two countries and qualitative research in a third. To be more precise, the paper derives from two meta-ethnographic analyses of ethnographic research products (reports, books, articles) from national research projects in Spain and Sweden, and a community schools project in Northern Ireland that has a sequential mixed method approach involving a questionnaire survey and qualitative case study approach (five case study schools).
We have used this approach previously in comparative rural education research in Beach and Vigo Arrazola, (2020). As the name suggests, meta-ethnography forms a means to synthesise ethnographies and other qualitative studies produced in different times and places (Beach and Vigo-Ararazola, 2020). Its strength lies in its potential to retain the interpretative properties and contextual embeddedness of these original investigations when collating and interpreting findings across them and identifying trends and possible future research priorities (Beach and Öhrn, 2022). It consists of four steps: 1. Selecting the studies; 2. Detailed reading of the selected texts; 3. Individual analyses were contrasted with each other to find common themes related to the main focus; and 4. Reciprocal and refutational analysis and description of outcomes in narrative synthesis.
For this paper, the Birmingham School Circuits of Culture Model and Massey’s (1994) spatial theory of social geographic development have provided support and drived the analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOur results complicate and contest a common position that asserts that rural schools are always of positive value to their community and the people there. The complication comes about because whilst some of the ethnographies show positive examples, community service is neither automatic nor the same everywhere and some schools actually work against local interests through cultural silencing, by marginalising local knowledge and by obfuscating global capitalist interests of exploitation and cultural domination in/of rural places. Things are of course not always in this way. In Spain, a common meaning of value appeared through a notion of schools as vital to a community’s survival, even if this may be as a Trojan-Horse bringing external values into the rural community, or as an intermediary for cultural domination.
Northern Ireland, unlike Spain and Sweden, is a recent political post-conflict setting where the community function of schooling works in relation to goals of peace and reconciliation (Roulston et al, 2021). These findings of reconciliation and peace appear also in Sweden too in some places in the past, though in relation to the struggles between (urban) capital and (rural) labour, representation and identity. They can work within and in line with capitalist interests and profit.
The differences within and between the national contexts comprise a key analytical challenge and their (reciprocal and refutational) comparative analysis culminates in a line-of-argument about the phenomenon of community function of schools in rural areas that allows us to offer an interpretation beyond the level of individual studies or themes. We use a number of thematic headings followed to do so, by a discussion and conclusion section.
ReferencesBeach, D. From, T. M. Johansson, and E. Öhrn. 2018. Educational and spatial justice in rural and urban areas in three Nordic countries: a meta-ethnography, Education. Inquiry, 9 (1): 4-21.
Beach, D., and Vigo Arrazola, B. 2020. Community and the education market: A cross-national comparative analysis of ethnographies of education inclusion and involvement in rural schools in Spain and Sweden. Journal of Rural Studies, 77: July 2020, 199-207.
Keddie, A., Mills, C. & Mills, M. (2008) Struggles to subvert the gendered field: issues of masculinity, rurality and class, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 16:2, 193-205.
Massey, D. 1994/2013. Space, place and gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Roberts, P., Downes, N. & Reid, J.A. (2022). Engaging rurality in Australian education research: addressing the field. Australian Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00587-4
Rönnlund, M. (2019). Careers, agency and place: Rural students reflect on their future, 65-82. In E. Öhrn and D. Beach (Eds.), Young People’s Life and Schooling in Rural Areas. London: Tufnell Press.
Rosenqvist, O. (2020). Deconstruction and hermeneutical space as keys to understanding the rural, Journal of Rural Studies, 75: April 2020, 132-142.
Roulston, S; McGuinness, S; Bates, J & O’Connor-Bones, U (2021): School partnerships in a post-conflict society: addressing challenges of collaboration and competition, Irish Educational Studies published online
Thibaut, P. & Carvalho, L. (2022) School design and learning: a sociomaterial exploration in rural schools in Chile, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2022.2150279.
14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Paper
Education Performance and Spatial Factors
Unn-Doris K. Bæck
UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Presenting Author: Bæck, Unn-Doris K.
Topic and Background:
This presentation explores spatial, or place-based, education challenges from a Norwegian context, more specifically focusing on rural issues. The main rationale for focusing on spatial inequalities in education in rural areas is that educational outcomes of students residing in rural areas are lower than for students residing elsewhere, which creates uneven opportunities for individuals depending on where they live. Empirical analyses of educational performance have often been dominated by individually centred approaches, focusing on variables such as gender, ethnicity or SES. Often lacking in education research has been contextual factors at municipal, county and national levels, as well as knowledge about interconnections between social and cultural resources as well as practices of schools (Bæck, 2015).
Objective and Research Questions:
This presentation explores how spatial factors have an effect on educational performance.
The main research questions are:
In what way does space affect educational performance among lower secondary students?
In what way does spatial factors affect gender differences in educational performance?
In what way does spatial factors affect social background differences in educational performance?
Disentangling the intricate interconnections between different variables playing out at different levels, demands concepts and constructs that enable us to grasp this complexity. The research field of place-based education disadvantage is in need of more theoretical discussions and advances that takes this into consideration (Corbett, 2015), and in this presentation I turn to insights from critical realism in order to explore a theoretical basis for a spatial analysis of this topic. This approach takes into consideration the actor-structure interplay in order to understand individual action and how societal structures work as causal factors in this regard (Archer, 2020; Bæck, 2022).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe analyses are based on register data for birth cohorts 1990-2004 from the National Education Data Base, Norway (NUDB). NUDB includes individual level education statistics since 1970. Measures of educational success are used as dependent variables, such as study points (points from compulsory education) and national tests in different subjects. Independent variables include gender, SES, parent’s educational background, geographic location and parent SES characteristics. In addition, the dataset from NUDB is expanded to include contextual variables connected to place of residence. The purpose is to enable contextualization through taking into account geographic, demographic, economic (including employment situation, rate of incidence of poverty, share of public education expenditure), ethnic, as well as other relevant social and cultural factors.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe study shows that spatial factors are essential in order to understand how individual characteristics affect educational performance. Space is intertwined with background factors such as SES and gender which plays out differently according to context.
ReferencesArcher, M. S. (2020). The Morphogenetic Approach: Critical Realism’s Explanatory Framework Approach. In P. Róna & L. Zsolnai (Eds.), Agency and Causal Explanation in Economics. Virtues and Economics (pp. 137-150): Springer, Cham.
Bæck, U.-D. K. (2022). Towards a critical realist ontology for spatial education analysis. In M. S. Archer, U.-D. K. Bæck, & T. Skinningsrud (Eds.), The Morphogenesis of the Norwegian Educational System. Emergence and Development from a Critical Realist Perspective (pp. 79-97): Routledge.
Bæck, U.-D. K. (2015). Rural location and academic success. Remarks on research, contextualisation and methodology. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. doi:10.1080/00313831.2015.1024163
Corbett, M. (2015). Rural Education: Some Sociological Provocations for the Field. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 25(3), 9-25.
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